A workflow is a group of states that are used to guide content from creation to publication. Before content is published, you can define states that provide a simple and linear workflow, or states that provide a branching workflow of arbitrary complexity. An example of a simple, linear workflow would be: draft -> review -> published.

Each state is defined by its name and a set of transitions to other states. For example, the default workflow provided by Perforce Chronicle provides transitions to the draft and published states from the review state.

Each transition can specify conditions that must be met before the transition is permitted, and actions that should occur when transitions are made. For example, it is possible to specify a condition requiring content to be categorized before the transition to the next state, and to specify that all site users with the reviewer's role be sent an email informing them of the transition to the review state.

A workflow applies to content when it has been assigned via the content's content type. All content of a particular content type inherits the same workflow. If you edit a content type to use a different workflow, the disposition of content created with the original workflow may change: content in a state that exists in both workflows remains in that state, content in any other state is considered to be in the new workflow's default state. If no workflow has been assigned to a content type, all content of that type is considered to be published.

Your interaction with workflows occurs each time you save content. If a workflow is assigned to your content's content type, when you save the content options are presented to transition the content to other states, provided the appropriate conditions have been met. If no workflow has been assigned, your content is considered published when it is saved. While saving the content, a transition only occurs when the content's workflow state differs from its previous state, or when the content entry is new and is being saved with a non-default state.

Workflow states, and their transitions, conditions and actions are specified in the States field on the Section 5.3, “Adding Workflows” screen. Workflow syntax is presented in Section 5.6, “Specifying Workflows”.

	The "Published" State
	When content has an assigned workflow and is in the published state, or if the content has no workflow assigned, the content is considered to be published. Content in any other state is considered to be unpublished. This is important when considering the permissions labelled Access Unpublished Content and Publish Content.